Chuff chuff chuff

Well, life has been, unusually for us, full of event. It all started some months ago, when we were thinking how much Big Grandson, who's transport-mad (particularly about trains/trams/buses) would enjoy being in Hamburg and going round the enormous model train exhibition where Mr L went for his 70th birthday. I mean, I went too. But Mr L is a train enthusiast. I just wandered around. 

So we decided that Mr L would offer to take him. And then Mr L realised that Big G would really like to go on the Eurostar, under the English Channel, rather than flying. This meant a train to London, a stay overnight beside St Pancras Station, the Eurostar and then various changes of train on the way to Hamburg. And back again. Somewhat to Mr L's relief, Big G's dad said he would like to go too, and crucially, as well as being a nice chap, Son-in-Law 1 has a first-class honours degree in German with distinction in spoken German. Big Grandson has been learning German on Duolingo for some months in preparation but is not yet at his father's level. 

Doing it this way was much more of a palaver, as well as being considerably more expensive, than flying. However, it did provide the train-mad nearly-12-year-old with lots of interesting trains to ride on. And, as it turned out, buses and undergrounds on the free days in Hamburg. 

Meanwhile Daughter 1 and I took his sister (who has no interest in trains but thought she might like theme parks) to Legoland in Windsor, in the south of England. This was much simpler but still involved a train to London, another to Slough, a third to Windsor, a very short walk to the hotel, a day at Legoland (travelling by taxi), another night in Windsor and then the journey in reverse, meeting up at King's Cross with Daughter 2 for a (my) birthday lunch. 

Big Granddaughter turned out not to be so keen on theme parks as she'd imagined... or at least, not on the scary rides. But there were various unscary rides that she and her mother went on, and other things to see such as this model world. There are also good playparks and shops, though it's an expensive way to to go playparks and shops... However, we had a good time and I think this may be, hooray, the last theme park I ever have to go to. We did EuroDisney and Florida Disney with our kids in their day and queuing in the sun is not my very favourite thing to do. Nor are scary rides (not that I did them. Good old Mr L took on that task).

The female side of the party got home on Tuesday, and then Daughter 1 had to go to work, while Biggest Granddaughter and I did various things in Edinburgh such as going to the Zoo,

buying books at a nice bookshop, having lunch out and so on, for the rest of the week. The male side of things got back to London yesterday after a very stressful day of cancelled and delayed trains (but in the end they caught their Eurostar - just - whew) and are now at Daughter 2's. Mr L and SIL 1 have had a quiet day, while Daughter 2 has nobly been taking glutton-for-punishment Big Grandson for
a London train/tube/bus day. This culminated in his being invited into the cab of the final train (which was stationary at the time!) and allowed to play with the buttons - seeing the camera's-eye view of the carriages, blowing the horn etc. I imagine this made his day!

Today I had a nice slow start and was just changing the sheets on our bed when I looked out of the window and saw the two friends I'd forgotten that I'd invited for coffee, coming down the path. Never have I sprung into action so quickly! Fortunately I had coffee and biscuits available and it was lovely to see them so all was well. Oh dear, brain overload...

Miss Crichton and other beautiful things

The decluttering continues, haltingly. Why did I ever keep this project on Mary Queen of Scots from my history class in 1962? 

The teacher who got us to do this project was one of the several eccentrics at my school - which was an all-girls, private one. She was called Miss Crichton and was known among us as Granny Crichton because she was so ancient - though I would be amazed if she were actually a granny. In those days, the retiral age for women teachers was 60, so this old, old lady was presumably about 55. She was always cold, and in winter and summer wore a tweed suit - often a cherry red one - with a scarf. In our school the teachers rather than the girls moved classrooms, and she would come into ours carrying a travel rug, climb on to the slightly raised platform at the front of the class, sit down at the desk, turn the chair towards the radiator, cover her legs with the rug and teach from that position, looking at us sideways. If the windows were open, she would direct us to close them. 

This would not have worked in the secondary school in which I taught. Fortunately we were very well-behaved.  

Her hair was suspiciously black and it was rumoured that it was a wig. It was certainly very shiny, though I think it probably looked wig-like mainly because she wore a hairnet over it, so it was bunched up at the ends. Her face was very round and flat and white - and, as I remember, wrinkled (though see above). 

In the two years that we had her, Miss Crichton gave us three projects that I can remember - the one above, one on the voyages of Christopher Columbus and one on the battle of Blenheim. I think I threw the others out some years ago but the M Q of S one somehow survived. It was long before the internet or even readily available photocopiers, so quite a lot of research went into these projects and we all travelled to museums and so on to acquire postcards as illustrations. There were about 15 handwritten pages in each and they took a long time. On the back of this one, Granny C has written VG+. That's all. Not a single comment anywhere else in the project. Which I now think is absolutely disgraceful! I wonder if she even read them. 

Ah well, this work of research has now been decluttered, along with all my school reports, a good number of my missionary aunt's photos of people unknown to us, all my school magazines and various other bits of paper which I don't want the children to feel that they need to keep once I'm no longer here.

At the Botanics, spring is in full gallop

And so it is, on a smaller scale, in our garden. 

Mr L, Big Grandson's other grandfather and Big Grandson had a grand day out in Glasgow at a model railway exhibition. I think this is an exhibit rather than the view from the train on the way there. 

And Daughter 2 has finished the stool she made at a stool-making class. It's lovely!

 

Appearance and reality

At Christmas, Mr L's (childless) cousin gave us this gingerbread construction kit, thinking that it would be a fun thing to do with the children on Christmas Day. Somehow - unaccountably - it didn't seem to fit in with the day of feeding 15 people with widely differing nutritional needs and wrangling 7, 5, 2 and 1-year-olds. However, the other day we got round to doing it. I had always assumed that Thimbleanna, who has a family gingerbread-house-making day, had created the whole thing from scratch. Now, having tried this feat using a kit, I realise that this would be taking family togetherness WAY too far.  Suffice to say it didn't end up looking like the example on the packet - and that was with Mr L doing most of the construction and the children mainly adding the sweeties. I think the one on the packet must have been made with concrete and Polyfilla. 

Anyway, the little ones enjoyed it and I'm told it tasted nice too. It went home with them. I had had enough of it by the time it got to this stage... .

On Saturday I took them on the bus to a stage production of "The Cat In The Hat". They like sitting upstairs at the front of buses. I can't say that I'm a great fan of Dr Seuss - you couldn't call his plots exactly intricate and I find his use of language somewhat tedious - but it was well done and the children enjoyed it. It's such fun having them to myself! They were very good.

A few hours ago they left to visit their other grandparents down south but before they did, they were with us, and Grandson drew various road layouts ("I've drawn a traffic light attached to a tree") while Biggest Granddaughter coloured a pirate granny (she said) on to a cut-out shape. I'm not sure why this granny (who isn't me, I'm told) has only one eye (though I suppose this is a bit traditional for pirates - after all she has only one hand and leg) but she does have a fancy necklace (it's not a collar). I also like the heart on her boot.

Blogger now says this (below) on the Dashboard page. I wonder whether the young people who post these messages have the faintest idea how little this means to elderly users like me. It might as well say "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously". This would be just as helpful. Maybe it's important; I hope not. Anyway, we'll see if I ever manage to post again. 

In regard to which - since various commenters were kind enough to say that they'd miss my blog - I've realised that I could continue doing it, while at the same time copying and pasting it on to a Word document for myself with more meaningful pictures of the grandchildren. At least, I think I could, unless the widget thing means anything vital. 

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Day 7 of Advent, chocolate and other matters

I'm kind of hiding from the fact that it's coming up for Christmas and I should perhaps do a bit more to prepare for this. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll think seriously about it. Tomorrow I'll make the Christmas cakes. Yes, I know they're supposed to be made months in advance but I never do and it never seems to make any difference. I might also write some letters and cards. I will also think about presents.

In fact, I do need to be a bit more organised about presents since none of the offspring will be here... though in fact that maybe means I can be a bit less organised, since none of them will be here... and we might just do a post-Christmas Christmas.

We've mainly given Son and Daughter-in-Law their presents already, mind you, since we won't see them at Christmas and are unlikely to see them between now and then. Apart from anything else, the road bridge over the River Forth, which is between them and us, has developed faults and is to be closed till next year (and who knows when next year?) This is causing HUGE disruption for people who live on one side and work on the other, as well as for the distribution of goods and for people who want to visit friends and family. There are other bridges but they're considerably further upstream.

There has been, as we say in Scotland, a tremendous stooshie about this. The SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party, who're in charge) is said to have been cost-cutting and ignoring the reports of stress on the metalwork of the bridge.

One certainly wouldn't like to be plunged into the icy waters far beneath.

When I was a girl, there was no road bridge, only a rail bridge and a small car ferry. Thus people didn't make that journey much by car. Once the bridge was built, of course far more people used it than had been expected and thus it's now wearing out. They're building another one but it's not nearly finished yet. It's all interesting and - though not so much for us - somewhat trying.

Sticky markers and a fiendish plot

 

Today's Advent packet: sticky page markers. There was also an orange set but Grandson took them home with him. He'd never seen any before and plans to use them to mark the chapter in his bedtime story book.

 

 

We went on a bus today. He loves bus travel and observes everything with much seriousness. The other day he pointed out that with some traffic lights, even when a colour isn't lit up, you can still see what the colour of the glass is; whereas with others, the glass appears completely black when not lit. Moreover, with the former kind, the glass of the green light looks dark blue.

 

"Why, Granny?" Ummm... . I had to admit that I'd never noticed. Traffic lights are not my specialist subject.

 

Grandson [to his dad]: I wonder if I could make a potion to make my sister invisible?
His dad: Hmm. Well, there aren't really any such things as invisibility potions.
[Pause.]
Grandson: Maybe we could just pile some things up in front of her?

(To put this in context, we'd been reading a book which featured invisibility potions and an annoying little sister... .)

Gnarled

 

The Advent gifts bore a certain resemblance to each other today. Daughter 2's to us, above...

 

 

... and ours to her.

 

 

We went up town today to do some uninteresting tasks. It was ch-i-ll-y. It was also sunny but the sun is low in the sky at this time of year and doesn't show in this photo.

 

 

You can tell that it's cold when our cats cuddle into each other. For those who have difficulty telling them apart, this is Cassie in the front. You can tell by her slightly tufted ears and her misleadingly innocent expression. She also has a red collar, while Sirius's is blue - not that you can see this here.

 

 

And of course, this is Sirius giving his sister an affectionate - possibly - little wash.

 

By the way, Anna and Molly - I got the sewing machine out today and actually USED IT! I hope you're proud of me. I was only putting an extra lining on curtains that have always let in rather too much light, but still - it's a start. The machine behaved itself and didn't - as it has a tendency to do - sew beautifully on the front but gnarl the thread into knots on the back.

 

That's all I'm doing just now but after Christmas... well, after New Year... who knows?

 

Daughter 1 is on holiday this week so we aren't looking after Grandson. I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms. I think we need to pay them a visit tomorrow.

 

PS On the crowded bus into town, a young woman of about 30 got up and gave me her seat. Very kind. Also slightly depressing!

Things that take longer than expected

This is a totally irrelevant picture of Cassie. I have nothing particular to say this evening since I've spent most of the day editing the church magazine. This is in addition to the hours I spent on it yesterday and the day before and the not inconsiderable time that Mr Life spent doing some of the technical stuff earlier. I would like to think that people will go "Wow! Impressive!" when they get it... but I suspect that they won't. It's astonishing how long it takes to footer about with things to get them looking right(ish) and to find suitable little illustrations to cheer it all up.

It's quite fun, though.

Less fun is what we're also doing, which is waiting for time to pass. Daughter 2 was supposed to arrive for the weekend at about twenty to midnight but her train has been delayed - as have lots of others - because someone has vandalised the signals on her route. Currently she's in York, which is some hours from here, and the train that she's been transferred on to isn't moving yet. The information suggests that she may get in about 2 am, but I imagine that this is a bit speculative. Since she has to go back down again about 36 hours later, this is all very trying. Ho hum.